Institution news
Q: Could you briefly explain your role, involvement and experience with regards to this seminar?
Andy Parsley (AP): With a background in gas turbine engine design, I’m a Robust Design Specialist at Rolls-Royce in Bristol. Robust design is about understanding and managing the effects of variation on your design, which should improve your product’s reliability as well as helping to avoid excessive conservatism.
My focus at this seminar is about managing and integrating the huge amount of analytical data we produce across all the different specialist areas related to our products – how to filter and share this data to consistently robust-optimise the concept at each level of detail in turn.
Q: What are the main engineering challenges facing the industry at the moment and what are the most common issues you hear from colleagues?
AP: The engineering challenges I see most often are polar opposites of each other. On the one hand, it can be hard to persuade engineers (and their managers) to take a step back from the detail and use systems-thinking techniques to ensure a problem is properly understood and thus rework cycles avoided. On the other hand, engineers can sometimes use systems thinking and robust design techniques without really planning why they’re using them and what they’ll do with the answers.
Q: What key topics are you excited to speak about?
AP: I’m really interested in multi-physics models that integrate together many different disciplines, and consequently how to realistically manage the mind-boggling number of permutations this generates.
Q: Who else are you most interested in hearing from on the programme, and why?
AP: I’m really looking forward to Alexandra Knight’s talk on data analytics. This is a fast growing field and I think the more we can share in forums like this, the more we will all benefit.
Q: What is your top tip in terms of designing for reliability?
AP: Ensure you know what your sources of variation are, and have data or a plan to acquire data to understand the effects of variation.
Q: Why is it important for engineers to join this seminar?
AP: Reliability is a meaningful measure, of the quality and value of a product. Therefore engineers must have an interest in designing for reliability if they are to hope to satisfy and retain their customer base.
Q: What developments are you most interested in for the future and why?
AP: I’m interested in electrical propulsion system developments, both in aerospace and automotive. As fossil fuels become less accessible and less affordable, and less environmentally tolerable, electric propulsion seems to be a very likely future.
Asset Management: Designing for Reliability takes place on 26 March 2019 at One Birdcage Walk in London.
Join this seminar to:
- Hear from asset management, design and reliability specialists from organisations across engineering sectors including ROSEN Group, Sellafield Ltd, Caterpillar Defense, Dyson, Rolls-Royce, Network Rail and more
- Learn how achieving clear definitions of life cycle conditions, loads and costs, can assist in saving costs and man-hours, reduce maintenance needs and guarantee safety
- Address challenges in capturing data in context, and using trending data to measure design robustness
- Build upon and improve existing design and strategies for whole life cycle costs
- Take part in interactive discussions during our roundtable sessions focusing in on key challenges relating to designing for reliability.
To book your place, please visit www.imeche.org/assetmanagement.